Sandhya Kambhampati is a former data reporter at ProPublica Illinois, where she analyzed statistics, databases and public records to uncover structural issues and abuses. She co-reported on the widespread inaccuracies in Cook County’s property tax assessment system, which was a Pulitzer Prize Finalist for Local Reporting in 2018. Before she joined ProPublica, she was a Knight-Mozilla fellow at Correctiv, an independent, nonprofit newsroom in Berlin. At Correctiv, she was on a reporting team that published an investigation into the German nursing home system, which prompted discussion across the country of how nursing homes should be evaluated and won the Deutsche Reporter Preis for Innovation. She also published an e-book during her fellowship on newsroom processes. Before that, she was a database reporter at The Chronicle of Higher Education, where she reported on college administrative pay and athletics. Her co-reported series on college athletic subsidies won the 2015 Education Writers Association Award for Data Journalism.
She trains journalists regularly in understanding statistics, freedom of information laws and data analysis. Her work has also published in Mother Jones, Die Welt, CNN, USA Today and PBS Washington Week and was featured in The New York Times, NPR and CBS Radio. Sandhya holds a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the E.W. Scripps School of Journalism at Ohio University, where she graduated as the outstanding overall senior.
